Chapter 2 - Beautiful
Waking up in the morning, I found myself staring at the ceiling for about an hour before checking the time limit on the quest which revealed he had less than two days. Quite an impossible task considering that there were millions in this city and he had no connections to find his woman.
"Well. I might as well start looking at the Corpo Plaza. Almost everyone passes by that place and considering I can see the names and level of people, it should be easier than how it is normally." I said before rolling out of the bed.
Putting on my clothes, I walked out of my apartment through the panel in the back and made my way to the Plaza. The way there wasn't too bad as the gangs were normally quiet in the morning and I sat on a bench looking at people. After an hour of just checking people out, I heard a dinging noise and found that I had gained a new skill.
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New Skill Gained
[Observe] - Level: 1 - Type: Active - Cost: 100MP - Description: The user is able to gain information on a target consisting of their name, titles, levels, and background.
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Smiling at this, I tried it out on an old man but instantly felt light headed. My mana bar was almost completely used up and my head hurt but it was slowly recovering with my mana. Shaking my head, I focused on the information that was currently in front of me.
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Name: John Doe
Titles: Corpo Office Worker
Level: 7
Background: An Arasaka corpo office worker who lives day in and day out of the office with nothing else in his life.
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"Wow. If that's what I'm going to become then I don't know if I want that as a goal." I said before I tried testing it on other individuals every time my mana recovered.
After an hour, I leveled up my observe skill to ten which allowed me to see into the emotions of the targets. This made me find that everyone was quite angry in this world. Either about work or personal life with little to barely anyone who was happy.
Then there was someone who slowly approached me with two goons behind him that I knew of from David's memories. Someone who I hated with every fiber of my being, at least until Gamer's Mind activated and calmed me down.
"Look who we've got here." The leader of this little group of Arasaka school student, Katsuo Tanaka.
"What the fuck do you want." I told him with an angry gaze.
"Woah man. Chill out." Katsuo said with a laugh before stating. "I just wanted to tell you that I'm sorry your mom got hurt."
"Huh....?" I was confused as he said this, until he continued.
"It's too bad she didn't outright die that night. I mean, who's going to pay for the medical bills now!" Katsuo laughed, and I would have reacted angrily but my Gamer's Mind skill held tight.
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Quest: Beat Down
Main Objective: Defeat Katsuo and his goons.
Sub Objective: Take no damage.
Time Limit: 5 Minutes
Rewards:
[100 EXP] - Main
[Growth Stimulant x1] - Sub
Failure:
[A Beating]
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Accept? [Yes] - [No]
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I looked around and found that aside from Katsuo, the other two goons didn't have any reflex chipware installed so I only had to worry about one person. I did have some MMA training in my past life thanks to my uncle. As for how I would fight back when Katsuo could activate his chip to hit me with martial arts master skills, it was quite easy. For one, the chip only recreated preset nerve impulses to recreate the act. So remembering the movements he had used to show off the skills to the class. So without thinking much, I accepted the quest and prepared to strike first.
With a swift front kick, Katsuo landed on his ass while the other two goons looked shocked. This didn't last long however as they charged at me but with a single throat chop, one was down and with a back kick, the second one was sent onto the ground too.
"Next time, if there is one. Just shut the fuck up." I said trying to intimidate him but I knew he wasn't done yet as he stood up and got into a stance.
He started punching into the air quite fast in a specific order, most likely to intimidate me but that wasn't going to work. Once the preset program was over, he reactivated it again, only this time with me as the target instead of the air. I evaded the attacks as they were the exact same and kept on countering all his blows before activating the sandevistan for a split second before my uppercut.
With the speed and power behind the attack, Katsuo flew off the ground before he landed on the ground knocked out.
"Take the little shit before I give you a little taste of Nyquil too." I said and they picked up their boss and left.
Seeing that we had caused a scene, I turned a little red as my emotions came back slightly. I then took off running as I still had time but stopped before I reached home as I got a call from the clinic.
"You're mother passed away." My stomach dropped with these words.
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Holding the container of my mother's ashes, I couldn't help but cry a little as I stared at it on the table. She had died because we couldn't afford the premium package and they couldn't use their higher end tech and meds. I tightened my hands as I wanted to punch someone, anyone. I wanted revenge on the gangs, the government, and the clinic, but the David within me knew it was just a fact of life in Night City. People die everyday and nothing can change that, while the me before this transmigrated hated the world.
Thankfully I had the Gamer's Mind as a crutch but I hated relying on others.
"What the hell am I going to do." I said before deciding to pull out my status.
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Name: David Martinez
Classification: Human Cyborg
Sex: Male
Age: 17
Background: After having died to a lightning strike, a seventeen year old died and was transmigrated into the body of David Martinez after his bus accident. Given a Gamer System, he is forced to complete quests or face punishments from an unknown god.
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Titles: [The Gamer]
Level: 2 (0/200)
AP: 10
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HP: 120/120 (Regen: 10/Second)
MP: 150/150 (Regen: 15/Second)
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Strength: 10
Agility: 11
Endurance: 12
Vitality: 10
Intelligence: 15
Wisdom: 15
Luck: 15
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Perks:
None
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Skills:
[Gamer's Mind] - Level: Max - Type: Passive - Cost: N/A - Description: The user is immune to all abnormal psychological effects, able to stay calm and logical under any situation.
[Gamer's Body] - Level: Max - Type: Passive - Cost: N/A - Description: The user is able to live life like a video game character, able to recover HP, MP, and any abnormal status effect with sleep.
[Pain Resistance] - Level: 6 - Type: Passive - Cost: N/A - Description: The user is able to resist 6% of all pain related effects.
[Observe] - Level: 12 - Type: Active - Cost: 100MP - Description: The user is able to gain information on a target consisting of their name, titles, levels, background, and current emotions.
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Seeing that I had leveled up and I didn't know how much a point could increase my capabilities. I decided to test it out. The first thing I did was do pushups and that showed me that I couldn't do anymore than eighty pushups before my arms turned to jelly and I couldn't do anymore. I then increased my endurance by one point and felt a rush of energy. Most of my fatigue vanished as I felt myself become more durable and energized.
"Now let's see what I can do." I said before doing pushups.
The results revealed that I could now do about one hundred twenty pushups before my arms turned to jelly. A total of fifty percent increase which I felt was unbelievable. Using another point into endurance just to confirm that my guess was correct, I did as many pushups as I could again and found I could do one hundred eighty pushups before my arms turned to jelly.
"Each point is worth a fifty percent increase in capability? Damn!" I said before deciding to increase my endurance to sixteen so that I wouldn't suffer from the Sandevistan again.
I then experimented with the sandevistan while checking my status and found that it increased my agility stat up to twenty one. A whole ten point difference which was quite a lot if each point increased the previous capabilities by fifty percent. Then again the sandevistan special effect did say that it multiplied by a factor of ten.
"Now what attributes should I increase using my last six points." I said in thought before shrugging and muttering. "Maybe I should just hold onto them until I need them. After all, I can also manually raise my attributes too. Which reminds me, I think my intelligence and wisdom increased."
It was probably when I fought against the goons but for now, I decided to start reading as I noticed that I wasn't too mentally tired despite the entire day. So I opened up the web and started reading all I could about this world since knowledge was power.
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Intelligence +1
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"Very literally it seems." I said as the entire night passed and I found myself having gained five intelligence points which made another screen pop out.
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Intelligence has increased to 20.
Please Select a Perk:
[Eidetic Memory] - Description: The user cannot forget anything, able to recall any experience in their lifetime with perfect clarity.
[Parallel Thinking] - Description: The user is able to split their mind into two, enabling them to accomplish two tasks at the same time.
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Seeing that perks were a thing, I wondered when the next one would come after twenty. With some thought, I decided to pick the Eidetic Memory Perk as that seemed more useful than Parallel Thinking at the moment. So once that was selected, all of my memories became perfectly clear and I could recall anything. At least in this life with limited memories from my past life which was strange but then again, I did die in that life.
"I guess I should go back to looking for Lucyna before I die. Don't want that." I said as I showered and left the apartment towards the plaza again.
Taking the train, I started thinking about this life and all that I had learned from the web. From what I knew, Night City was a city state, operated mainly by large corporations with the big boss being Arasaka. A very large corporation that worked on many things such as cybernetics, medicine, and weapons.
"So am I supposed to live like a normal person in this world? Or do I become a cyberpunk mercenary like many others? I could even leave this place and explore this world but I'm pretty sure it's very similar to my last world. What to do." I said in thought before something appeared in my eyes, another quest that seemed very interesting.
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Quest: Beyond The World
Main Objective: Find a way to travel the multiverse.
Sub Objective: Become the Ruler of the world.
Time Limit: Death
Rewards:
[10,000,000,000 EXP] - Main
[Skill: World Authority] - Sub
Failure:
[Partial Removal of Gamer System Features]
[Boredom]
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Accept? [Yes] - [No]
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"Well at least I have a goal now." I said before I felt a shock run through my mind.
Activating the sandevistan, I reacted quickly and grabbed the arm that now had my data shard within their hand. Finding a woman with a bob cut with one side being longer. Her hair was rainbow pastel colored and she had light purple eyes with red eye and lip makeup. She wore a skin tight thighless netrunner jumpsuit over white shorts, a white cropped jacket, with gray stockings and black knee high boots.
Looking at her, I couldn't help but mutter under my breath. "Beautiful...."